Review of “Autistic Thinking and the Cure for Autism” by Brian Beames
TL;DR: if you came here wondering whether to buy this book, I’ll save you the trouble — don’t. There are a million better uses of your time and money.
Let’s just say it up front: Autistic Thinking by Brian Beames is a doozy. With a title that proclaims a “cause” and a “cure” for autism (and the promise that you can keep autism from happening to you or your family), I braced myself for what turned out to be 64 pages of pseudoscientific chaos.
I did a podcast episode for my podcast Autistic FM of the book, so you if you’d rather watch or listen to this review, you can:
A Wild Premise
The book’s central argument is that autism isn’t real in a biological or medical sense. Instead, Beames insists it’s a conceptual creation — some kind of “literary creativity” gone awry. According to him, this “construct” can be cured simply by unnamed individuals deciding they’re no longer autistic. In other words, autism is basically a matter of “mind over matter,” and if you’d only embrace your inner normalcy, poof — autism gone. The mental gymnastics here are next-level.
Beames leans heavily on texts and theories dating back over a century, particularly a 1911 book by Eugen Bleuler. If you know anything about how far psychology and psychiatry have come since 1911, you’ll realize pretty quickly that ignoring 100+ years of scientific progress is a recipe for disaster. Sure, a century ago, we didn’t have the knowledge or the language for neurodivergences that we have today. But that doesn’t mean people with autism didn’t exist. They did; we just lacked the understanding and frameworks for describing their experiences.
The “Cure” That Isn’t
If the title of Autistic Thinking promises a cure, you might expect a whole chunk of the book to be dedicated to that miraculous remedy. Instead, Beames buries it in one half-page chapter, a measly 400 words, where he says: “Just decide you’re normal.” He doesn’t mention therapy, coping strategies, or deeper understanding. He doesn’t mention actual neurological research or even lived experiences of autistic people. It’s just “Poof, change your self-concept, problem solved.” You're on the right track if this strikes you as simplistic and deeply insulting.
Suggesting you can talk yourself out of being autistic is like telling someone with dyslexia they’d read perfectly if they just believed in themselves. It’s condescending, it’s harmful, and it ignores decades of legitimate research — plus countless personal stories from autistic individuals who have tried (and often exhausted themselves) with masking and forced “normalcy.”
You’re on the right track if this strikes you as simplistic and deeply insulting.
Credentials and Confusion
One of the strangest parts of the book is how Beames presents his background. He’s a medical technician, which he describes as a “mini-medical degree.” In reality, lab technicians are trained to perform diagnostic tests on blood, tissue, and other samples; they’re an essential part of the medical ecosystem, but it’s vastly different from a full medical degree. And it’s certainly not the same as a background in psychiatry or clinical psychology.
This confusion about what pathology means in a psychiatric context comes through loud and clear. In medicine, “pathology” often refers to measurable signs of disease — like cancerous cells or abnormal white blood counts. But in psychology, pathology deals with behaviors, thought patterns, or emotional processes that disrupt someone’s life. Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference, not something you can pinpoint in a lab sample the way you can for leukemia. Yet Beames uses the fact that he can’t find autism in a blood test as “proof” autism doesn’t exist biologically. This is the literary equivalent of yelling “If we can’t see it, it must not be real!”
Ancient References and Dodgy Sources
The bulk of Beames’s references come from works that are anywhere from 70 to 113 years old, including a 1924 text comparing “autistic thinking” to daydreaming. That might have been acceptable in the early 20th century, when psychology was in its infancy. But to treat that comparison as definitive today, in the face of a century of research, is completely bananas. It’s like using a telegram to explain how smartphones work.
Moreover, the referencing style in Autistic Thinking is sloppy at best. He cites websites that aren’t exactly what you’d call scholarly sources and seems to rely on Google Translate for some century-old texts. If you’re going to wage war on all established science about autism, you should probably ground your arguments in some rock-solid academic references. Instead, this pamphlet teeters on a patchwork of questionable citations — some of which he can’t even locate accurately.
A Denial of Lived Experience
What’s perhaps most frustrating is that Beames doesn’t just misunderstand the concept of autism; he dismisses the lived experiences of millions of autistic people. For many, obtaining an autism diagnosis is a relief, a chance to make sense of why they struggle in specific areas or excel in others. Words aren’t prisons; they’re tools to help us see reality more clearly and connect with others who share similar experiences.
Yet Beames’s stance suggests that not only does he reject the idea of autism, he rejects the entire notion of neurodivergence. His solution to any perceived problem? Mask harder, cling to “normalcy,” and everything will be fine. For folks who’ve spent a lifetime masking, the emotional toll is massive. Asking them to mask more or “just change your perception” is infuriatingly tone-deaf.
Why It Matters
This might all sound like harmless quackery — just one more self-published pamphlet lost in the sea of bizarre theories. But the harm is real. People newly exploring an autism diagnosis might stumble on this book and think, “Maybe I can just will this away.” Instead of finding resources that foster self-understanding and acceptance, they’d be told to bury their differences deeper. That’s damaging and cruel.
We also have to be wary of the reemergence of eugenics-type thinking (and yes, Bleuler, whom Beames cites, was a fan of that). A 113-year-old text advocating for sterilization of “burdened” individuals shouldn’t be the bedrock for a modern-day argument about autism’s existence. Our society has (thankfully) come a very long way, and the last thing we need is a retrograde call to “eliminate” something by pretending it doesn’t exist.
Better Reads
If you’re genuinely curious about autism — especially if you’re exploring your own diagnosis — skip Autistic Thinking and dive into actual scholarship or well-respected autobiographies. Some examples can be found on the episode’s show notes page.
Final Verdict
In the end, Autistic Thinking is more than just a bad book; it’s a car crash of pseudoscience and denial, topped with a eugenics cherry. Beames’s credentials don’t line up with the sweeping medical or psychological conclusions he tries to draw, and his “cause/cure” premise is so unsupported and bizarre it’d be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Rather than embracing the reality of autism — both its struggles and its joys — he insists that the condition is purely imaginary, conjured into existence by a century-old label, and perpetuated by people who just won’t “snap out of it.”
That’s not how science works. It’s not how neurology works. It’s not how empathy or human decency works. If you really want to learn about autism, give this one a pass and pick up one of the many truly insightful, research-based, and empathetic books on the topic. Autistic Thinking deserves to be shelved under “Pseudoscience” and left to gather a thick layer of dust. The world is complicated and fascinating enough without doubling down on ignorance — and that’s exactly what this pamphlet does.
